1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to communications, and more particularly, to a communication application for conducting conversations and that supports (i) one or more media types such as live voice and text, (ii) the ability to conduct the conversation in either a real-time synchronous mode, similar to a “live” conversation, or an asynchronous time-shifting mode and (iii) the ability to seamlessly transition between the two modes.
2. Description of Related Art
In spite of being a mature technology, telephony has changed little over the years. Similar to the initial telephone system developed over a hundred years ago, a telephone call today still requires a circuit connection between the parties before voice can be transmitted. If a circuit connection is not established, for whatever reason, no communication can take place.
A known advancement in telephony is voice mail. If a call is made and the recipient does not answer the phone, then the call is “rolled-over” into a separate voice mail system, typically maintained on a voice mail server or answering machine connected to a phone. The telephone and voice mail systems, however, are not integrated. Rather, the voice mail services are “tacked-on” to the underlying phone system. The fact that the two systems are separate and distinct, and not integrated, creates a number of inconveniences and inefficiencies.
Consider a real-world situation where two parties wish to have a brief conversation. If party A makes a call while party B is busy, then after the phone rings numerous times, party A is eventually rolled over into the voice mail of party B. Only after listening to and navigating through the voice mail system, can party A leave a message. To retrieve the message, party B is required to call into the voice mail system, possibly listen to other messages first in the queue, before listening to the message left by party A. In reply, party B may call party A. If party A is busy, the above process is repeated. This routine may occur multiple times as the two parties attempt to reach each other. Eventually one of the parties will place a call and a live circuit will be established. Only at this point is it possible for the two parties to “rendezvous” and engage in a live conversation. The difficulty and time wasted for the two parties to communicate through voice mail, as highlighted in this real-world example, is attributable to the fact that the telephone system and voice mail are two different systems that do not interoperate very well together.
With the advent of the Internet, telephony based on Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP has become popular. Despite a number of years of development, VoIP services today are little different than traditional telephony, as described above. Add on services like voicemail, email notifications and phonebook auto-dialing, are all common with VoIP. The fundamental communication service of VoIP, however, remains the same. A party is still required to place a call and wait for a connection to be made. If the recipient does not answer, the call is rolled over into voice mail, just like conventional telephony. VoIP has therefore not changed the fundamental way people communicate.
Besides VoIP, other forms of communication have become popular over the Internet. Email, instant messaging, texting, video chats have all become widely used. Each form of communication, however, is a different application that relies on a separate communication platform, each defining a distinct protocol for conveying media from a sender to a recipient. Each protocol is generally designed to carry only one specific type of media and is generally not compatible with the other protocols. For example, the email protocol or SMTP cannot be used to transport live voice, telephones cannot be used to transport emails, chat protocols cannot be used to transport text or emails, etc. Due to the constraints described above, the natural tendency is for a person receiving a message of one media type to reply using the same media type. If a person receives an email, text message, or voice message, the reply is likely to be an email, text or voice message respectively. As a result, the messages of a conversation tend to all be of the same media type and use the same protocol.
It is always possible for a person receiving a message of one media type using a first protocol to respond with a message of another media type using a second protocol. For example, a person receiving an email may respond by picking up the phone and calling the sender of the email. When this occurs, different communication applications are being used. There is no convergence of the different media types over a single communication protocol. As a result, the messages of the conversation are broken up or fragmented across different communication platforms. There is currently no way to interleave the messages of different media types and transported using different platforms and/or protocols into a unified conversation record.
Attempts have been made to unify communications across the different communication platforms, such as voice mail, email, instant messaging, chat messaging, as well as presence information, call controls, etc. These attempts typically involve the creation of a user interface layer, which sits above that various underlying communication application platforms, which present to the user a unified user interface. Unified communications allow an individual to receive a message in one media type and to respond with a message in another media type. For example, one may receive a voice mail, but may elect to respond immediately, through a chat message or phone call.
With unified communications, however, the “unification” occurs at the user interface layer, not at the underlying protocol or core layer of the various communication platforms. If a person receives an email and elects to respond by a chat message, then the incoming message is transported over the SMTP (or a similar email protocol) and the outgoing message is transported over the chat protocol. The outgoing chat message is not somehow transported over the email protocol. Consequently there is no convergence of the different media types being transmitted over the same communication core. As result, there is no way to construct conversations of interleaved messages of different media types in a coherent manner using current unified communication efforts.
Another shortcoming of the above listed communication applications is that they are each either synchronous or asynchronous, but not both. Text, SMTP or other email protocols are asynchronous, while telephone, video chat and instant messaging are synchronous. The asynchronous protocols cannot be used for live communication, whereas the synchronous protocols cannot be used for asynchronous communication.